Saturday, August 27, 2011

Butts & Tweets

by Gary

My hope is I’m sober in the back of the police car. That I wasn’t foolish enough to have left the tavern, no doubt bending the elbow with fellow writers bemoaning our lot in life, and got behind the wheel of my ’92 Caddy El-D smashed. I actually do own a Cadillac Eldorado of that vintage bought off my friend, the late screenwriter and director (Bad Day at Black Rock, Convicts Four, etc.) Millard Kaufman. So one I wouldn’t want to take the chance of causing any harm to anyone or harming that car. In that order, really. And oh no, the vehicle isn’t showroom floor pristine; it has some bondo on it, and the driver's side leather seat is torn at the seam a bit. But that just makes in the kind of car some desperate character in an Elmore Leonard novel would drive.

Anyway, back to the back seat. I gotta be sober ‘cause like Michael Wiley mentioned, I don’t friggin’ tweet and this task will take all my concentration. I know, I know, all writers should be tweeting but I keep hoping Kim Kardasian, or any of them Kardasians for that matter, all of whom apparently have legions of Twitter followers, will go gaga for one my books – tweeting about how much she enjoyed the butt waxing scenes in my book. That’s her in the photo here in the lab coat standing next to an x-ray of said backside attesting to its authenticity. Heh. Okay, so let’s pretend my wife gave me here hand-me-down iPhone because she’d gotten the newest one and showed me how to work the damn thing. Which I know involves a touch screen so I have half a chance of being able to accomplish my goal.

A friend of mine who tweets like a sonofagun has met some interesting media pundits in person because of tweeting tells me Facebook is for your friends from high school and Twitter is for people you would have liked to have been friends with in high school. Them I don't know, but do know a few criminal defense attorneys and also from my buddy says you can direct message a person as long as one is a follower of the other. To build the proper tension, I should only have one opportunity to tweet a short message. I know the officer in the passenger seat, and there’s two of them ‘cause that’s just how I roll and it’ll take two of ‘em to take me in I tell ya, will notice in the review my shoulders jack-hammering. My hands are cuffed behind my back and it takes some maneuvering to angle the phone around enough to partially see the screen let alone use my thumbs to get to the right app and do my tweet. A direct message to a lawyer? To my wife? A tweet to TMZ alerting them that I’m the writer Kim enthused about?

Okay, I’ll take the Kevin Smith route and turn this negative into a positive. When brother Smith, he of wide girth as am I, got his fat butt tossed off a Southwest plane for not fitting properly in his seat, he tweeting like a son of a gun about this and got all kinds of media. My tweet to all my followers then is:

“Arrested. Frame Up. Was Researching Police Corruption Novel. If Not Heard From in Two Days, You’ll Know Why…You’ll Know Why.”

As Mr. Burns would say in his sibilant tone, “Exxxcellent.” Now all I have to do once I make bail, is wait for Hollywood to call. The pic will star Kim Kardasian as a hard-charging investigative reporter, directed by Kevin Smith.

Gary, I envy you that Eldorado and especially your friendship with Millard Kaufman. What a life that guy led! You didn't even mention that he was a World War II veteran, co-creator of Mister Magoo and that McSweeney's published his first novel at age 90!

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Each week the crime fiction authors of Criminal Minds respond to a question about writing, reading, murder and mayhem.Question of the Week:

Have you noticed that the jacket blurb for a lot of literary novels has been saying "a great mystery" or "a nail-biting thriller" recently? As a mystery writer, what do you think is going on? And also, what non-genre novel do *you* think is a great mystery?

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